Wednesday, October 16, 2013

You might say it all began when he presented oral program
notes to the audience before he conducted a piece at a live BBSO performance.

“It breaks down the barrier between the stage and the
audience,” said Charles Greenwell, 25-year veteran conductor of the Birmingham
Bloomfield Symphony Orchestra (BBSO).
“It brings them into the experience.”

His wife and best advisor, Cleopatra, suggested he continue
with the practice when she recognized how favorably the audience responded to
Greenwell’s impromptu commentaries. It
was as though he were satisfying their hunger for background on the various
pieces the orchestra was playing.

Such sensitivity and responsiveness to the audience has
contributed to Greenwell’s tenure as the BBSO’s pops conductor for 14 years and
then as its music director.

“I love sharing things with people, especially the funny
and serious stories of the music and the musicians,” said Greenwell. “I like the audience to feel a part of what’s
going on on stage.”

But the highly successful and much respected Greenwell has
decided to pass on the baton. He will conduct
his last concert with the BBSO on Sunday October 20 at 7 p.m. at the Birmingham
Seaholm High School Auditorium.

Greenwell’s passion for music began when he was a small
child living in Manhattan with his parents who were both concert and opera
singers. His father sang with the New
York City Opera and Beverly Sills. When
Greenwell was in his teens the family moved to East Lansing where his father
was a voice professor at Michigan State University.

“I love music and what it does to the human spirit,” he
said. “It creates an extraordinary range
of emotions. For me, this is truly
wonderful and I can’t think of anything else that gives me this kind of
satisfaction and deep-seated reward.”

Greenwell earned his undergraduate degree at MSU in 1961
and later his master’s degree in voice.
He also spent two years as Entertainment Officer of the 3rd U.S. Army in
Atlanta. After college he went to London
and studied under Sir Adrian Boult at the Royal College of Music for two and a
half years. He subsequently toured
Europe, Canada and the United States.

At the time of Greenwell’s emergence as a conductor there
was really no training in the craft as there is today.

“To lead an orchestra, you either have it naturally or
you don’t,” said Greenwell. “I think I
do, but it’s not something I think about.
Rather, conducting is about the way you deal with people. If you don’t have that, you come off as
mechanical or phony.”

Leading an orchestra requires inspiring the musicians, he
said. It is the “intangible in the art,”
and if it’s not there, it can’t be created.

Greenwell’s success has also been about treating the
musicians properly.

“I always made it a point to treat the musicians with
great respect, love and dignity. And,
the musicians have responded to that.”

Primus inter
pares (Latin for first among equals) is Greenwell’s watchword in conducting.

“You are like a traffic cop with regard to tempos and dynamics, but
it is not imposed.”

Instead, Greenwell believes the conductor and the
musicians should share in the interpretation of the piece with the goal of making
the performance what it ought to be.

Actually, it is commonly assumed that professional
orchestra musicians know the technical aspects of making music. In community orchestras, however, the
conductor must take into account the spirit of the music as well as its
technical aspects.

“I tend to go more for the spirit,” said Greenwell. “It doesn’t matter that it’s not perfect
technically as long as there is joy in making the music, connecting with the
audience and making the experience memorable and satisfying.”

Greenwell also believes that the music isn’t just for the
audience, but for the musicians as well.

“I hope the love I’m feeling for the music translates to
the orchestra,” he said. “I’m also
concerned about the high-level of fun we have together. I hope the overall product is that we provide
a musical experience of great happiness where we strive for a common goal.”

One of Greenwell’s prime accomplishments with the BBSO was
discovering and encouraging violinist Gabriel Bolkosky, the guest soloist for
Greenwell’s farewell concert.

Twenty-four years ago this month Bolkosky auditioned with
the BBSO as a young artist and he has gone on to make a considerable career for
himself, said Greenwell. It was,
therefore, a no-brainer to decide who should play as guest soloist at
Greenwell’s final concert.

The concert will feature Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 7”;
Mendelssohn’s “Violin Concerto in E Minor” as well as his “The Beautiful Melusine.”

“I always had it in mind to do the Beethoven 7th
at my last concert with BBSO,” said Greenwell.
“And, once Gabriel Bolkosky selected the famous Mendelssohn E-minor
Violin Concerto, it was a natural to add the lovely but infrequently-performed concert
overture.”

“The
Mendelssohn is a very popular and flashy concerto that is always an audience
pleaser and Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is not only amazing as it is
Beethoven, it's one of Beethoven's best,” said Brandon Faber, BBSO executive
director. “It commands a great balance of strength and subtlety,
fierceness and refinement. The Allegretto movement is one of his most famous
musical passages and it stands alone as the second half of the program very,
very well. I'm sure Charles has a particular fondness for this Symphony.”

Another of Greenwell’s contributions to the BBSO is to
provide the audience with an “astonishing wide repertoire.” It interests them, gets them to the
concerts—and encourages them to come back for more—as they have all these years.

Greenwell is also known for his work as a program host
and music director for 20 years at WQRS-FM, a classical music station that
folded in 1997. He truly loved
broadcasting, an endeavor he started during his college years at MSU some 40
years ago.

Although he loved working at WQRS, he saw its end as a
blessing in disguise: he was able to
pursue full-time conducting as music director of the BBSO and as conductor of
the Southern Great Lakes Symphony (formerly the Allen Park Symphony Orchestra).

Since the early 1990s until last year Greenwell has been assistant
conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO), which included writing the
program notes and providing webcasts. He
has also directed the Tulsa Philharmonic, the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, the
Windsor Symphony Orchestra, and the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, among others,
and served as a producer for the recordings of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra
for Chandos Records of England.

“There have been some wonderful twists and turns
throughout my life,” he said.

Perhaps those same twists and turns will emerge in his
retirement, but Greenwell blithely says he will deal with life as it comes—just
as he always has.

A great advocate of community symphony orchestras,
Greenwell worries about sustaining them due to the financial difficulties they
must face. There were far more of them
ten to fifteen years ago when grants and fundraising campaigns supported them,
he said.

The BBSO has survived well over these difficult years,
but it still has to pinch pennies, said Greenwell.

Getting into music in general was a lot easier when he
was younger, said Greenwell. A musician
could go to New York and earn enough between gigs and part-time jobs to keep
going comfortably. Now it is much more
difficult.

“New York’s streets are littered with artists,” he said. “So unless music is a passion that you can’t
do without, your chances for success in it are not good.”

Nevertheless, and despite the grim prospects for a
musical career, Greenwell encourages musicians—and all artists—to give it a try
because it’s better to go to New York and fail than to not try at all—and spend
a lifetime wondering if you could have made it.

As to the future of the arts, Greenwell remains
“guardedly optimistic” or “rose-colored pessimistic.” He predicts that the whole music scene will
be vastly different from what it is now in just the next ten years.

“Audiences have been graying for a long time and it’s
rare to see young people at a concert,” he said. “I hope we can keep things going because
there’s always a place for orchestra, opera and ballet companies.”

It is critical that the young become more involved in the
artistic experience, he said. This is
very difficult these days since music education has taken a back seat in the school
curriculum and in some cases, it has been eliminated.

He also emphasized that if music is not a part of a
child’s life at an early age, it will not be there at all. That’s where future audiences will come
from.

“Music has been my great love and passion since I was a
child,” said Greenwell. “I love music. For me, it is truly wonderful. What it gives us in rewards and satisfaction
is almost like going to another plane. There
is nothing quite like it for the emotions it can bring out in us—as well as the
memories associated with them.”

Greenwell expects the last concert to be
bittersweet.

“Twenty-five years is quite a stretch,” he said. “But it’s time to get fresh blood and new
ideas. What the orchestra and I have
shared is quite extraordinary. We
enjoyed working with one another and giving concerts. There will undoubtedly be some emotion
welling up on the last notes of the Beethoven.”

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

It's been a year since I've posted articles, and I'm anxious to get back to it!

Truth is, I've been teaching writing and had no time to do my own writing.

Last year I worked at Michigan State University and taught the first year seminar at James Madison College. I also taught freshman composition for the MSU Writing Rhetoric and American Cultures Department. This included a class with international students. I liked working with the international students so much that I took two courses in English as a Second Language (ESL) with the Oxford Seminars--the basic course and the TOEFL preparation course.